Local Locals: David

Local Locals is a series of posts in which we stop people, ask them a few questions, take their picture and post the results — sometimes condensed — here.

David Henry Hwang

55 years old
Acclaimed playwright best known for his Tony Award winning play “M. Butterfly” and the Broadway hit “Chinglish.”

David currently holds a residency at the prestigious Signature Theater in Manhattan. The theater company will soon host the world premiere of David’s latest work, “Kung Fu,” a fusion of dance and theater about the young Bruce Lee.

We talked with David recently about the evolving craft of playwriting, the role of art in encouraging cultural understanding and his love for Fort Greene.How do you feel about the revival of your plays at Signature, to return to them now decades after they premiered? How is their reception today different from how they were initially received?

I feel like they’re different cases because in “Golden Child,” I wanted a certain amount of rewriting. So the text was a little bit different than it was the first time. It was closer to doing a new play. As a production, it was more intimate and personal than the original.

In the case with “Dance and the Railroad,” it was pretty much exactly the same text as we did 30 years ago. But the production elements were more elaborate than the original production. There was originally only one scaffold and something that looked like a tree.

Just in terms of the reception, I was nervous about whether the two plays were still relevant. But I feel like they’ve both been received quite well. And in the case of “Golden Child,” it was the first good review that I’ve gotten in The New York Times in about 20 years. So, I think overall it’s been very gratifying for me to revisit my older plays and to see that critics and audiences have really embraced the show.

Besides the hilarious mistranslations you encountered, like in “Chinglish,” what was your first visit to China like? What brought you to China for the first time?

I started going to China simply because China has become very interested in Broadway-style shows. And I happen to be the only even nominally Chinese person that has written a Broadway show so people would call me over for meetings. They were interested in pitching different projects that I could do in China or Chinese projects that I could bring to Broadway. None of these meetings ever resulted in anything but they gave me an opportunity to learn more about the amazing changes that are going on in China.

This year, I have the chance to bring a couple shows to Asia. One was “Chinglish” in Hong Kong. We will also be bringing “Dance of the Railroad” to Wuzhen, outside of Shanghai. That represents one of the official times that one of my plays has been done in China.

What has surprised me about going there is that they accept me as a Chinese person, which is surprising, since I’m such a bad Chinese speaker. I don’t speak the language, I don’t know very much about China. But China has always been so large and diverse that there is a pretty big umbrella of what it means to be Chinese.

Since your works often explore misunderstandings between cultures and ethnic identity, does the current tension between the U.S. and China, and the way it plays out culturally in the U.S., affect your work?

I think that it has been pretty consistent throughout my lifetime that the lives of Asian Americans are affected by the relationship between America and the root culture. So during the ’80s there was all this tension about Japan, which spilled over into affecting all Asians. In the late 90s, there was tension about Wen Ho Lee and donor gate and my father got caught up in it and was accused of laundering money for China by The New York Times. I wrote about it in “Yellow Face.” So I think, yes, the U.S.-China relationship continues to have an affect on how Asian Americans and Chinese Americans are perceived.

I’m very interested in the U.S.-China relationship because I think it’s one of the huge stories of the 21st century and however it goes, it’s going to have a huge bearing on my future and my children’s future as Asian Americans.

What role do you think art plays to break down stereotypes? Are there other artists out there doing similar work?

In many ways, stereotypes are just bad writing. They are one or two dimensional cardboard cutout figures that are easy to demonize. I think what we can do as writers and artists is to create fuller, three dimensional pictures of people so that at least, everybody knows that we’re dealing with human beings, whether we are talking about people in the U.S. or in other countries. It’s that humanizing element that is most important. If we can humanize each other, then we are more likely to find common ground and areas of cooperation as opposed to going down the spiral of hostility and aggression.

There are a lot of artists doing this type of work. There is a wonderful generation of younger Chinese and Asian American playwrights coming up. I have no doubt they have already made an impact and that they will continue to make an impact on our culture.

What do you love best about living in Fort Greene?

My wife and I have always admired the row houses and brownstones in Fort Greene, in particular around Fort Green Park. I think that it’s a combination of the houses themselves that are really beautiful and how I really like the diversity of the neighborhood in all senses – age, ethnicity, and profession. It’s also a great food neighborhood. So what’s not to like?

Rebecca Chao is a freelance writer based in Fort Greene. She has written for the Atlantic, Guardian and CNN, among others.

About the Local

The Local provides news, information, entertainment and informed conversation about the things that matter to you, your neighbors and your family, from bloggers and citizens who live, work and create in your community. It is run by students and faculty of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, in collaboration with The New York Times, which provides supervision to assure that the blog remains impartial, reporting-based, thorough and rooted in Times standards.

Get news about Fort Greene and Clinton Hill in our daily roundup, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s summer slate of youth-oriented programs and the third annual Art of Brooklyn Film Festival coming to St. Joseph’s College in Clinton Hill.

In today’s daily post, you’ll find news on the spring opening of the Fort Greene Artisan Market, a Pratt Institute student artwork display at a Gagosian Gallery in Manhattan and a new recording studio in the nabe.

In this crime report, locals told police that their belongings were stolen from cars and trucks, their homes were burglarized and their bank accounts were used in unauthorized ways. Also, disputes between significant others resulted in violence and robberies last week. The trend of robberies on the B38 bus continued last week, with another incident on May 4 marking the tenth such robbery in the precinct this year so far.

How Does Your School Stack Up?

Find test scores and other performance data for your East Village school -- and how the numbers compare to peer schools throughout the state.